The Moabite pottery which reached Europe through Mr. Shapira's agency and is deposited in the Museum at Berlin is now commonly regarded as a modern forgery; but of this forgery, if it be one, it is asserted that Mr. Shapira was the dupe and not the accomplice. The leathern fragments now produced by Mr. Shapira were, as he alleges, obtained by him from certain Arabs near Dibon, the neighborhood where the Moabite stone was discovered. The agent employed by him in their purchase was an Arab "who would steal his mother-in-law for a few piastres," and who would probably be even less scrupulous about a few blackened slips of ancient or modern sheepskin. The value placed by Mr. Shapira on the fragments is, however, a cool million sterling, and at this price they are offered to the British Museum, where they have been temporarily deposited for examination. Dr. Ginsburg, the well-known Semitic scholar--whose receipt of a grant of £500 from the Prime Minister toward the production of his important work on the "Massorah" we announced with much satisfaction yesterday--is now busily engaged in deciphering the contents of the fragments and examining their genuineness. On this latter question we refrain from pronouncing an opinion. When Dr. Ginsburg's report appears, we shall be able to judge whether these extraordinary fragments are really 2,500 years old, or have been compiled within the last few years. No complete account of the contents of the fragments can yet be given. To decipher them is a work of time and of infinite patience and skill, as will readily be inferred from the account we have given above of the appearance and condition of the slips. But enough has been deciphered to show that the text employed in them exhibits discrepancies of the most remarkable and important character as compared with that of the received version of the Mosaic books. In the first verse of the ninth chapter of Deuteronomy, where the received version reads, "Thou art to pass over Jordan this day, to go in to possess nations greater and mightier than thyself," the corresponding passage of the fragments substitutes the plural for the singular, "Ye" for '"Thou," while for "_g'dôlîm_," the word translated "greater," it reads "_rabbîm_." But a far more complete idea of the variations of text and signification may be obtained from a comparison of the text of the Decalogue as it appears in the received version in the sixth chapter of Deuteronomy with that contained in the fragments so far as they have yet been deciphered. The version of the fragments, literally rendered, runs as follows: